<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>homeward bound by scythian_andromache (leavesofmyrtle)</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25621765">homeward bound</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/leavesofmyrtle/pseuds/scythian_andromache'>scythian_andromache (leavesofmyrtle)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Old Guard (Movie 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Study, Don't copy to another site, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Immortal Love, M/M, Memories, Nostalgia, Post-Canon, Soulmates, the concept of home, the deep yearning nostalgia of seeing a place that you no longer belong to</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 09:07:08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,215</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25621765</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/leavesofmyrtle/pseuds/scythian_andromache</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Nicolò di Genova came from Genova before Italy even existed, but it's been a long time since Nicky went home. (AKA: the immortals have a complicated relationship with memory and nostalgia, but sometimes home is intangible.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Minor or Background Relationship(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>168</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>homeward bound</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>no beta we die like immortals<br/>(and then pop up alive to make more dumb mistakes)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Places, they hold memories in them. Make them tangible again, like a smell that transports you back to your childhood classroom, or a song that sends shivers up your spine and makes you feel just as you did when you first heard it in a café twenty years ago. Places are vessels for the past, even as physical landscapes shape the future. They hold the imprints of the things that happened there, for better or worse; places have <em> power. </em> </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>"Joe, Nicky, I need you to meet this contact." Andy's voice is crisp and collected as she details the next mission, passing Joe a scrap of paper with an address. "They have a dossier we need, and we can't leave an electronic trail. In person only, this time." </p><p>Even with Copley covering their asses, erasing any digital footprint he finds, Andy's been extra careful of late, making sure there's no chance that anyone learns who they are again, and honestly, Nicky appreciates it. He doesn't need anyone else experimenting on Joe. It's not the first time they've been captured and it probably won't be the last, but being used as lab rats has left a certain bitter pang of fear in the back of Nicky's brain. </p><p>"Nile will go with me," Andy continues, unaware of the little detour his brain took him on. "We'll rendezvous in three days, at the safe house outside of Marseille." She pauses. "You get out clean, you hear me? I'd better see both your ugly mugs in front of me on Thursday."  </p><p>"Yes, boss," says Joe, and Nicky manages a small smile, because this is one of the little ways Andy says <em> I love you. </em></p><p>"Right, let's move out."</p><p>It's only a matter of grabbing their go-bags, really, but Nicky takes a moment to pull Nile aside and give her a quick hug. </p><p>"You take care of yourself, <em> cucciola,</em>" he whispers. "Look out for Andy, but look out for yourself too, <em> capisci?</em>" </p><p>Nile hugs him fiercely, tightly, and then lets go quickly, straightening back into the stiff military stance that seems to be her fallback in situations like these when she's tamping down her emotions. "See you in three days, and not a second later."</p><p>He nods, and then they're going their separate ways, Andy and Nile screeching away in Andy's beat up Citroën.</p><p>"You want to do the honors, <em> Habibi</em>?" Joe asks, sliding into the driver's seat and passing the little scrap of neatly folded paper that contains their mission to Nicky. </p><p>Of course, Joe immediately complicates Nicky's efforts by reaching out to lace their fingers together over the gear shift, distracting him so that he fumbles with the paper. Nicky laughs, his task all the more difficult now with just one hand, and Joe lifts their twined hands to give Nicky's a kiss. Nicky shakes his head fondly at Joe's antics—he starts every road trip this way—and finally looks down to read who they're headed to meet. </p><p>The corners of Nicky's vision blur a little, and he feels himself go lightheaded. He squeezes Joe's hand tightly—too tightly—as he stares uncomprehendingly at what's inked there. Even though there is a name and the street number of a residence off of a piazza, all he can see is the last line, written in Copley's tight script: <em> Genoa, Italy</em>. </p><p>"Yusuf," he breathes. "Yusuf, look." </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Genova, once upon a time, was home. Long before "Italy" existed, long before he became an immortal, the bustling streets of the merchant city were as familiar to Nicky as the freckle on his wrist or the soft way his mother smiled at her children when they did something clever. There was the market, where people shouted over each other about wares and prices, and the fountain where, at age nine, he'd tested his balance walking the lip of it and failed miserably, falling and scraping his knee, and the little twisting alley behind his home where, at thirteen on a dare, he'd chastely kissed Francesca, the baker's daughter, and <em> hated </em>it. He knew to always walk on the left side of the street that passed along his house, because the right side had loose cobblestones that were liable to trip you, and he knew that on Fridays, the shipbuilders took to the taverns, filling them with spirited—if drunken—singing. He fit there, and life was uncomplicated, or at least as uncomplicated as life ever gets. </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Nicky hasn't been to Genova in more than nine hundred years. </p><p>They're immortals with adequate resources and his name is literally <em> di Genova, </em> so it might seem strange. Such a tangible connection to a location, one that was so close to his heart, and he hasn't gone in centuries, not even when he and Joe lived in Venitzia during the Renaissance, and not when they went to Firenze for the weekend a few years ago. </p><p>Because sometimes you can't go back. </p><p>He tried, once, in the early years after he first became immortal. He thought it might be a balm, a comfort. Something familiar to ease the profound sense of loss that had opened a cavern in his chest. A touchstone to who he'd been before the world turned upside down. </p><p>Instead, it felt like walking through a ghost town. It felt like existing within a refracted re-creation of his memories. Everything so hauntingly familiar, and yet slightly out of place. The city had grown, re-bricked, a new plaza where there should have been a house, and rows of shops and residences that hadn't existed before. The market went on cheerfully in the same spot, but the vendors were new, the wares organized differently. He'd walked past his childhood home to find the street busier, the stucco faded and cracked. </p><p>On his walk through the city, he'd sworn he saw his sister at the market, her face staring back at him, and then the woman had cursed him out for looking at her too long, and he'd realized the pitch of her voice was wrong, the curve of her eyebrow not quite right. Maybe, possibly, the old woman she was with when she left the market—hair greying and hunched figure and deep wrinkles around her dark eyes—had been his sister, or maybe it was just wishful thinking. Maybe she'd already been dead a generation. Maybe Nicky didn't actually remember her face, already so faded in his memory, and was so desperate to remember that he'd opened himself up to the power of suggestion. </p><p>It was only after the incident in the market that he realized: time had been grinding away at this once-familiar place, leaving no comfort to be had. </p><p>Nicky left the next morning, and never tried to return to Genova again. </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>It wasn't that he'd avoided it <em> specifically; </em>there'd just never been a reason to go before, and even though they'd visited Joe's hometown once, he'd never pushed to see Nicky's, sensing his reluctance. </p><p>After all, Genova isn't the <em> only </em> place Nicky or Joe have a difficult relationship with; perhaps it's the most salient, but they're immortal, and places tend to carry tangible reminders of the lives they've led, and the people they'll never get back.</p><p>Memories weigh down other cities too. Constantinople—er, Istanbul now, Nicky supposes—is another one, the streets somehow both foreign and nostalgic after the ten years they lived there. Echoes of friends' laughs ring out in quiet corners of the city, and the fragrant odor of spices—the bite of cumin and the wafting caress of mint—in the grand bazaar smells like hot nights drinking coffee with excitable scholars, passionately discussing philosophy until all hours, when their eyelids got leaden but their hearts were full. And strolling along the picturesque canals in Bruges never fails to turn up pangs of the indescribable loss of Quỳnh, and the memory of a broken Andy, sobbing that she'd lost her. (It's the only time Nicky can remember seeing Andy cry in the thousand years since they'd met.) </p><p>It happens with every place they've ever lived to some degree, wholly unavoidable, but Genova holds a strange and intimate attachment—something intrinsic—that these other places do not have. </p><p>It's true that sometimes you can never go back, but it's also true that you cannot escape your past entirely, either. </p><p>And now they have a mission there. </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>They pull into Genova in the late afternoon, as the golden hour rays are illuminating the city. (There's really nothing quite like the Italian sun, especially as it sets the port and the seaside on fire.) It's more colorful than he remembers, except for the water: that's as vibrant as it's always been. </p><p>They're making contact with their source in the morning, which means that tonight is mostly about laying low and not getting killed, two things that they should frankly be better at than they are. </p><p>Joe finds them an unremarkable <em>pensione</em> on a quiet side street, and books them a room for the night, paid in cash and using aliases. Untraceable. </p><p>Their route to finding a place to eat takes them past a view of the ocean and Nicky has to pause. Everything else has changed, but the ocean hasn't, not really. It's from a slightly different angle, but the same view he grew up with, familiar in a reflexive way, like muscle memory, something he'd forgotten he knew. </p><p>Over dinner, they talk about the mission, and speculate about how Nile and Andy are doing ("I bet you Andy's already done something stupid and Nile's had to take a bullet for her," Joe says, and Nicky replies, "Do you think I'm stupid? I know Andy too well; there's no way I'm taking that bet.") and revisit their long-standing debate about whether exiling Booker when his betrayal was borne of loneliness and isolation is really the right move. </p><p>The beautiful thing about being with someone so very long is that they know you, inside and out. Joe doesn't need to ask about how Nicky's dealing with being back in Genova, because he can see it written out across his face, detailed in the tension in his shoulders. (They'd talked a little bit about it in the car, and will probably talk about it some more later, but for now Joe won't press, and Nicky loves him all the more for it.) </p><p>On the way back to the <em> pensione </em> they take a different route, and stumble across a little plaza that Nicky recognizes. He squeezes Joe's hand and they continue, but if he looks hard enough, he fancies he can see the shade of his younger self scampering across the cobblestones. </p><p>How foolish, really. </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>In the deepest depths of the night, Nicky, restless, slips out of bed, sneaks out of the <em> pensione.  </em></p><p>The city has been painted over, rebuilt a dozen different times and pieced together like a patchwork quilt, but underneath it all are the bones of the city Nicky once knew. His feet carry him through the warren of streets, and he finds himself, suddenly, standing in front of his childhood home.</p><p>He stares at the building where he was born. Where he begrudgingly learned his first shaky letters. Where he sliced open his palm, trying to whittle a bit of wood like his older brother. Where he and his sister Catalina, closest in age of all of them, swapped whispered secrets and fantastical stories of their own creation. Where he dreamed of changing the world with the misguided vision of an insulated youth. Where he ate, slept, and laughed for the first fourteen years of his very long life. </p><p>It's a drop in the bucket, now, and looking at it this time doesn't produce the same emotions as it did so long ago. Instead, he just feels an emptiness, a sense of detachment. It is someone else's home now. It has not been <em> his </em>in any meaningful way for a long time, a transfer of ownership occurring with every brick that was replaced, every layer of paint splattered on. A blessing and a curse in equal measure, he supposes, to feel this way. </p><p>He's been there a few minutes—reality almost lost to him as he tries to remember exactly how his mother used to quirk her eyebrows at them and finds he can't—when he suddenly realizes that he's not alone, a thousand years of dangerous situations training him to notice and believe the prickling feeling on the back of his neck. </p><p>But when he turns, he just sees Joe, hands in his pockets, watching him intently. His face is thrown half in relief by a nearby streetlamp, and he blinks for a moment, marveling at how beautiful his Yusuf is, how entirely dear. </p><p>Joe doesn't ask what Nicky is doing here, or why he's not getting the sleep they need before the drop tomorrow. He simply joins him, and they stand there in quiet contemplation for a few moments, just being <em> together </em>in front of this unspectacular building. </p><p>Finally, "Is this where <em> Nicolotto </em> grew up?"</p><p>Nicky finds himself nodding. "It was not much back then, either. Less, even."</p><p>Joe studies the place again in the flickering light of the streetlamps. </p><p>"It should be a museum," he declares, and Nicky scoffs.</p><p>"Every house in Italy could be in a museum if you think having old bones warrants a spot there."</p><p>"Ah, but not every house was your house," says Joe. </p><p>"The person who came from here was no good," mutters Nicky. For all the shiny, fleeting memories of childhood, he wasn't: he was prejudiced, closed minded, convinced of his own superiority, taught to hate instead of love. It took dying several times—several dozen—to figure that out. </p><p>"None of that,<em> ya Habib albi. </em> That person needed to live," says Joe, fiercely, "needed to die, needed to <em> be, </em> so that I could meet you." Nicky ducks his head, but Joe's only just beginning, and he continues emphatically, "His existence is a miracle I praise every day, because every moment in time had to happen exactly as it did so that I would meet you, so that we might exist together. If this is the house where you grew up, I praise the blocks that made it stand, so that you might sleep each night within it; I praise the stones on the ground that absorbed your footfalls; I praise the herbs that grew on the windowsill and sweetened the air of each breath you drew in. This place, flawed though it may be, <em> brought me you.</em>" </p><p>Yusuf's poeticism is nothing new, but it still sneaks up on him every time. "Elegant bastard," Nicky curses, several tears tracking down his cheeks, and reaches out, cups Joe's face tenderly and pulls him in for a desperate kiss. </p><p>A millennia and his lips are still tingling, a millennia and Joe's kiss is still tender, life-affirming, a question and an answer and a beautiful, delicate promise all at once. </p><p>Even when they break apart, they remain in each other's space, foreheads pressed together, breath mingling, hands resting on cheeks. </p><p>It's not as though they've been apart for any vast stretch of time recently, but Nicky still takes a moment to relish in Joe's presence, ground himself in the warmth of Joe's skin under his fingertips. It's on a deep inhale as he clears his mind that the idea comes to him, and he flicks his eyes open to meet Joe's.</p><p>
  <em> "Yallah ya hayati."  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> "Ila al-funduq?"  </em>
</p><p>"Not yet," Nicky says. He links his arm through Joe's. "I want to show you something else, first."</p><p>Nicky lets his feet guide them, and together they walk the remnants of the neighborhood of Nicky's youth, as he tells Joe about the merchant who lived in that house, and the shop on this street that sometimes gave the neighborhood children sweets when the owner was in a good mood. He allows himself to reminisce, finally stops holding back the wave of wistfulness and sadness and displacement and fondness—complicated and messy—as he narrates these long gone trivial bits of his childhood to Joe. The eastern sky is smudged with a little pink by the time the arrive back at the <em> pensione </em> for a few quick hours of sleep.  </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>It is easier the next morning, a weight off his chest, the itchy eyes that come with a lack of sleep a small price to pay. When they go to collect the dossier, they trod part of a route he thinks that he used to take to go to the butcher's shop for his mother.</p><p>"I got into a fight in that alley," he says aloud, as the memory springs to life for the first time in centuries, triggered by the curve of the stone at the corner of the building. </p><p>"My Nicolò?" asks Joe dramatically, pretending to be shocked. "In a <em> fight?</em>" </p><p>"It wasn't much of one," says Nicky, the ghost of a smile on his face. He can't remember what the fight was about, anymore, or the name of the boy he got in a scuffle with. Dario? Dante? It doesn't come to him. Just the kiss of pain that came with his split lip and bruised cheekbone. </p><p>"Of course it wasn't," says Joe. "You had not yet met me."</p><p>Nicky snorts, but Joe isn't wrong. To this day, and even counting the many missions Andy has sent them on, some of his most intense fights were against Joe, before they realized they were far better suited as lovers than enemies. </p><p>"I have a secret," he says in a low voice, and when Joe turns to look at him, he continues, "I do not even think I won." </p><p>Joe's laugh rings out along the cobblestone street.  </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Genova, once upon a time, was home, but that was a long time ago. Places are vessels for memory and nostalgia, reminders of the people we have known and the people we have <em> been. </em> Places have power, but something you learn with time is that, powerful as they may be, home is not always a <em> place. </em> </p><p>As they pull out of the city with the dossier tucked in his bag, Joe at the wheel and hands laced together over the gear shift, Nicky feels something within himself quiet. Genova still means something to him and probably always will, but it is softer now, more approachable, a collection of memories he is reconciling with and not a cavernous hole to be avoided. He is content with filing it away as <em> home, once </em> instead of the dour <em> no longer home </em>he's thought of it as for so long. </p><p>After all, it is Yusuf, dear Yusuf, who is home, who <em> has been </em>for nearly a millennia now. His eyes are vessels for memory—their brightest, happiest moments, and also the tragedy and hardships they have faced together—and his soft smile carries its own nostalgia, even as it is his beacon of hope. Home is a patchwork of days and nights and soft whispers traded between them, a constellation of moments traced across his skin, the invisible story of their love etched within their souls. </p><p>Nicky lifts up their intertwined fingers and kisses Joe's hand, and when Joe glances over at him, he smiles softly, a thousand beautiful memories refracted in Joe's eyes. Home, indeed. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you for reading! Comments/kudos always appreciated but never necessary :) </p><p>***</p><p>Just in case, here's the translations:</p><p>•cucciola - italian. literally "puppy", term of endearment used by parents to children, via some sources can also mean something like "rookie"/someone inexperienced with something<br/>•capisci - italian. capiche/understand<br/>•Habibi - arabic. "my love", masc. endearment<br/>•ya Habib albi - arabic. "love of my heart"<br/>•Yallah ya hayati - arabic. Yallah = "let's go", ya hayati = "my life", endearment<br/>•ila al-funduq? = arabic. "to the hotel?"</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>